Month: March 2014

While I was riding in a bus bound for my city, and enjoyed the ambiance of quiet and peaceful aura of the trip, I happened to glance the number 3-27 at the dashboard. Out of my mind, I closed my eyes, trying to get a nap as I was trying to speculate the “next thing to do” when I arrived at Cagayan de Oro. I was sure the day was called “Thursday”, a time for our mid-week meeting at the Kingdom Hall and I checked how prepared myself was in attending the meeting, considering that I had my flowered colored white and gray whole dress, my favorite 3-inch- heeled brown sandal and my tablet with the downloaded latest books. All of them were packed in my traveling bag three days ago. I opened my eyes again to check the time reflected on the bus dashboard and I knew I had one hour and forty minutes to go. But the number 3-27 was there again as an alternation of the flashing time. “What is it in this number? As if there is more that I should ponder…hmmmm…… its March 27! Oh! I’m so sorry…it’s the forgotten date again. March 27, the day when I exchanged vows with Lordino S. Tado, an OFW who died in Dubai one year ago. Remembering the date is remembering Lordino again. The pain…the agony…and the abandonment.

Of course I liked the date because it’s our wedding anniversary day but I just wonder why I kept on forgetting it even since the first year of our marriage. I admire some couples who celebrate their wedding anniversaries. Mary Walker says that wedding anniversary celebrations are important because; It reaffirms your marriage , it shows gratitude and support for the union, it gives a much needed break from the monotony of daily life endeavor, it is a source of pride and accomplishment, and it proclaims to the world the goodness of your marriage. After reading her article, I said to myself: “no wonder….”

Yes, he’s already gone and wishing for a celebration of anniversary is a funny thing. But I still have a colorful imagination of our wedding anniversary. This is supposedly the 25th year of our vows and we should have our iris flowers as decoration with the tsavorite stone on our gift. But these are again the shameful things to imagine, for our unity was not worth remembering but I still valued the marriage.

Iris Flowerstsavorite stone

Every time my eye catches the shadow of number “27”, my intelligence will not halt processing till it realizes its significance. Aside from our marriage date, he was 27 when we face the altar, our house address is block 2 lot 7 and he died at date 27. I don’t believe in any superstitions but this number has meaning to my life and since this number is forever in the calendar my memory of him will be forever too.

When I read this article, I was reminded of the golden shower tree in bloom, which color has a resemblance with this rapeseed fields. Thanks to Janaline who posted this. She inspired me when she stated the significance of the color yellow. I loved yellow flowers too.

One of my favourite colours has always been yellow. I think it is a “happy” colour and it cheers me up so I always have yellow flowers in my house. This year I was fortunate enough to be ably to walk through the rapeseed fields of England while they were in bloom.

The rapeseed fields of Cambridgeshire, England.

In the meanings of color in color psychology, the color yellow is the color of the mind and the intellect. It is optimistic and cheerful. It inspires original thought and inquisitiveness. The color yellow loves…

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.-Samson

Getting a name is not our choice. It’s our parent’s choice and the names they usually chose are associated with the time and feelings they had during the pregnancy. Then it is often reflected to the circumstances they encountered during the period of nurturing us inside a womb. So, we have no control over the name given to us at birth.

However, we are responsible to determine the meaning of our name as we grow up. King Solomon was right when he said “Even a child is known by his actions, whether his behavior is pure and right.” We might ask ourselves: “What would be an appropriate name to describe my dominant quality or my reputation? This question is so serious and it requires our deep understanding on how we deal with our own life. Why? Wise King Solomon reminded us that: “A good name is to be chosen rather than the great wealth; To be respected is better than the silver and gold.” For sure, you will agree with the idea that if we gain a good name or reputation in our own community, we have a valuable asset. Of course, making a good name in our own circles start with making a good name first with our God. We should not forget Prophet Isaiah who wrote: “This is what Jehovah says: your Repurchaser, the Holy One of Israel; I, Jehovah, am your God, the One teaching you to benefit yourself, the one guiding you in the way you should walk. If only you will pay attention to my commandments, the peace would become just like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” Meditating Isaiah’s reminder will let us acquire a lasting treasure. Peace, happiness and contentment will overshadow to our being.

Our name often denotes fame or reputation. Just like King David, whose fame spread throughout the lands and God put dread upon him all the nations. Bringing a bad name upon someone meant making a false accusation against that person, marring his reputation. We don’t want this to happen. True, we have our own literal name but giving the essential meaning to it depends on our choice. To have our name “cast out as wicked” would mean a loss of good reputation. A loss of reputation is a grief of one’s soul, a shame to the family, friends and relatives.

At birth a person has no reputation, and therefore his name is little more than a label. That is why King Solomon says: “A name is better than good oil, and the day of death than the day of one’s being born.” Not at birth, but during the full course of a person’s life does his “name” take on real meaning in the sense of identifying him either as a person practicing righteousness or as one practicing wickedness.

I’m not even entirely sure how these sorts of things happen, but on my way to Bruges, Belgium via train, I sat down next to a man and somehow became involved in a philosophical discussion on artificial intelligence and the essence of humanity in what felt like a matter of seconds. This complete stranger and I bonded over the consistent feelings of loneliness in life, paired with the profound quest for connectivity and the ways in which technology might simultaneously facilitate and diminish our experiences with each other and with ourselves.

Absolutely no idea how we started talking about all of this. It felt like I was all of a sudden plopped down into an ongoing conversation with an old friend. There’s something nice about getting into this kind of discussion with a stranger. You don’t have an image to uphold or expectations to fulfill. You can say “I don’t…

Ordinary people, ordinary days, ordinary rides and common places are nothing unless you have the heart to search for the meaning inside. The photo here tells you nothing but just an ordinary face inside the mirror. But there is something with the “face”that I would like to elaborate in this photo. The girl traveled to the mountainous area of Bukidnon, named Manalog. It is a 70 kilometer ride which took her three hours to reach the destination, passing the five rivers and the two wooden bridges. Of course, she was in the group of 34 “Kingdom Proclaimers” who voluntarily preached during weekends, a religious activity that she participated happily.

She is a typical Filipina who has many aspirations in life. Her determination to pursue her dreams had made her strong and happy. She is a college undergrad who first worked as a Customer Service Representative at Synnex-Concentrix, Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines. She loved that work so much, however, the company has a long travel from her home and the long-distance didn’t allow her to stay long in the job. Then she discovered the idea of working at home, an online work that will warrant her the financial, social, moral and spiritual security. She was hired as the Webinar Team Leader at the National Council of Entrepreneural Technology Transfer based at Washington D.C. USA. Working online with two employers to handle was manageable so she accepted the other offer which was a Webinar Coordinator at Maintain Momentum, a Toronto, Canada based company. Two years later she worked as a Supervisor at Fortress Holdings a Beverly Hills, California- based. Presently, she is the Project Manager of Hawk Media Group, An Austin Texas prestigious company based and a Communication Director on Real Properties at Jacoby Services Houston, Texas. Her position as a Project Manager had dramatically changed her life to a comfort zone for she is receiving the highest salary ever.

That ordinary face and simple profile inside the mirror has in connection with her amazing skills in Communications that had moved the world’s big companies of social media into global businesses. The girl is known as Alecs, Lea Christina J. Tado in real life, a trained leader and speaker at Lapasan National High School in her HS years, now a charming and friendly lady in her own circles but a decisive and strict leader in her group.

Selfie has a friendly pathways to the social media, the digital age’s expression of yourself, not only to be somebody in your own region but across the globe as well ,where the friends and relatives could easily have the latest updates of yourselves. Social media and the mobile web has popularized the phenomenon called, the selfie, the fact that the young generations are especially involved in trending this apps. Research shows that the 18 to 34 years of age are the vast digital users today so taking selfie is a new, easy and affordable trend between the rich and the poor, the famous and the infamous

Be it alone or in the group, taking selfies is easy to do wherever you are. An Astronaut Clay Anderson, Expedition 15 flight engineer, uses a digital camera to take a ‘selfie’ of himself and his spaceship. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide uses a digital still camera to take a photo of himself during a spacewalk. The famous icons like the US President Barack Obama, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt were taking selfie during a memorial service for Nelson Mandela. Aside from their accessibility to the social media, taking selfie is a safe and comfortable shots for documentation or social fad of prominent people. They can have the option of bringing their own gadgets and have a “do-it-yourself” affair to complete the day rather than being dependent to their camera men.

The selfie phenomenon reached the high level of prominence when Ellen Degeneres initiated the selfie of 12 people fit in one shot. But just recently, Ali Emre Mazlumoğlu tweeted the latest version of the famed Oscars “Ellen Selfie” , which managed to fit in even more people than Bradley Cooper: 14 instead of 12.

Taking selfies have another reasons to tell. Pride and self-appreciation play a vital role in promoting oneself through selfie. Filipinos, whose record shows that they are the number one or known as the selfie capital of the planet, are proud to admit that they had the pride and heritage to show to the world. Cities like Makati, Cebu, Quezon and Iloilo led the selfie trend in this country.

Selfies are so popular today and because of this trending social needs, the Apple Company is quick enough to design the first selfie apps on iPhones. As I mentioned a while ago, selfie was popularized by the social media. Now, Apple is a tandem of your selfie, the more your image will be lifted up among others in every minute of your life. Of course, many became affected with their face, so the phenomenon and popularity of selfies had caused a huge impact on facial plastic surgeries. People became more conscious of their beauties and looks. Taking your image to your social media portals will be more exciting if you look like a celebrity in your own account. This is also the reason why the study had found out that three plastic surgeons have an increase requests for procedures due to patients being more self-aware of their looks with social media. “Social platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and the I dPhone app Selfie.im, which are solely image based, force patients to hold a microscope up to their image and often look at it with a more self-critical eye than ever before,” Edward Farrior, MD, President of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery said in a press release . “These images are often the first impressions young people put out there to prospective friends, romantic interests and employers and our pettiness want to put their best face forward.”

The idea of taking picture to oneself has been around since the camera had existed. The term selfie was traced back to 2002. Now, Oxford English Dictionary declared year 2013, as the year of the word “selfie”. The phenomenon has risen in popularity recently, relating the “selfie” events from the spotlight at the Oscars to the random encounters with the homeless people down to the aftermath of the near tragedies. Now, Apple Company has launched “the sharing selfies” apps to meet the demands of the people and the social media. So what are you waiting for? Have your “selfie” in your social media account too and be happy. It is to boost your self esteem and promise, it is rewarding.

Why do most of the Koreans, Japanese and Chinese are fond of making suicides? I am an avid reader of Yahoo news and whenever I encounter topics related to suicide, I read them. I just wonder how their culture had viewed the importance of life and the meaning of nurturing life to the fullest. The picture here is an image of Chan, one of the contestants of South Korean TV Program who recently committed suicide because of shame. She is a pretty 29 year-old lady, a supposedly promising woman in her own country had she viewed her life into the positive outlook. A man in Guangdong , China ended his life after he was accused of knocking down an old man. This man named Wu was to pay a huge amount demanded by an old man after recovering. Even Sandara Park, during her interview said that she would get suicide if she did not win in the contest. Ryunosuke Akutagawa, a popular writer in Japan wrote a letter before ending his life saying..” I am suffering to live….of course I do not want to die but…” this statement alarmed many psychologists that plenty of the people who took their lives do not want to die, they just want to end whatever is going on in their life. China, Latvia, Japan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Guyana, South Korea, Russia, Lithuania, and Greenland are the top ten countries in the world having the high suicidal rates of its people..

What triggered them to do so? Kay Redfield Jamison, the professor of psychiatry at the John’s Hopkins University School of Medicine disclosed that the underlying factors of getting suicide lies in the construing of events. She adds that “Most minds, when healthy, do not construe any event as devastating enough to warrant suicide”. Eve K. Moscicki, of the US National Institute of Mental Health notes that many factors work together to lead to suicidal behavior. The factors include mental and addictive disorders, genetic makeup and brain chemistry. Research shows that Europe and the United States have more than 90 percent completed suicides caused by depression, bipolar mood disorder, schizophrenia and alcohol or drug abuse. These are the mental and addictive disorders. However, the people who committed suicide were believed to be the normal individuals who were worth of our interpersonal understandings. The long cumulative despair they suffered had caused them heavy emotional burden and they gave up helplessly.

Our life is a gift from our creator. Even the lives of our close friends and relatives are gifts to us too. We are happy when they are happy, we became sad when they are sad too. When life is in the momentum of upside down, we must discern the reasons why it happened and learn from the consequences that one has faced. Ending our life just because we are trapped by our emotions and we allow our thoughts to narrow down and think death as the only escape is an evidence that you didn’t see the reasons of your existence and the meaning of your life. Handling our lives is our own choice. However, we must consider our choices. AN ANCIENT proverb says: “Do not toil to gain riches. Cease from your own understanding. Have you caused your eyes to glance at it, when it is nothing? For without fail it makes wings for itself like those of an eagle and flies away toward the heavens. In other words, it is not wise to invest more on material wealth and fame for they can vanish quickly in any disastrous situations like calamity and other unforeseen occurrences. So, why not establish a loving relationship with our creator and enjoy the beauty of life?

Our life evolved to our family and friends. Our relationship with them is so precious so and we value them too as our gifts. We can view our family as our beautiful garden of flowers where we can rest, enjoy and meditate. Yes, just like a garden, it is a refreshing refuge from stress of everyday life because they faithfully are the source of refreshing companionship and warmth feelings. The feeling of depression and stress will not hover around us if we can successfully build a strong and united family with precious friends around who share the same interests and values. Gardens have normal problems like the destructive pests and insects but because we love our garden, we look for ways to prevent them. Just like our family, we look for remedies whenever personal differences arise. This means providing a healthy atmosphere for a family member having mood disorders or mental illness.

Your life is precious to everybody else in the family circles and friends. Whenever you feel that the suicidal thoughts is so dominant in your mood, seek for a professional assistance. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you suffer a mental illness. In fact depression has been called as “The common cold of the mind”, anyone can get it and it can be treated. Come out from your shell, share your feelings to a mature and trusted friend. Confide your feelings to other to diminish the high intensity of your emotions. This will give you a fresh perspective on the problems you face.

We loved going to the sea during summer cold mornings. Not minding this sea urchin encounter. No one liked to hold nor touch it, almost all of us had a bad experience with it. When a friendly fisherman came to us with a smiling face, we thought he had a good catch of fish that morning and so we waited for him. When he showed us this sea urchin, our face turned into sour…saying, “never mind” ” we didn’t like getting hurt anymore”. Then he burst into laughter.

Sea urchins have globe to flattened-shaped bodies covered with spines. They are non-aggressive marine animals found all over the world. They live in shallow, rocky bottoms, or hide in sandy cervices. Human contact with sea urchins is either accidental or intentional. People accidentally step on them in shallow surf, or intentionally pick up the urchins, unaware that they must handle the spines with care to avoid injury.

Sea urchins have two types of venomous organs – spines and pedicellaria. Spines produce puncture wounds. Pedicellaria are small, delicate seizing organs that lie between the spines and release venom when they attach to an object.See: See Urchins Puncture Overview

So we left the sea urchin unattended on the top of the sand pile. No matter how wonderful this creature was, we just gave him an adorable look and several camera shots.

It was late in the afternoon of February 25th when I arrived at the gateway of Compostela Valley, my place of destination for that night.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compostela_Valley) I always visit this place because this is where my ancestors belonged. While sitting at the front seat of the bus, I took the opportunity of taking pictures at the high way, slowly invaded by the shadows of the palm trees, revealing the cold beauty of the valley. The bus was fully loaded with passengers, most of them were the commoners who traveled back home, bringing the different stuffs they bought from the City.

It was already dusk and I tried to enjoy the reminiscing of memories in the place. I was supposed to be employed here as a teacher but my opportunity had suddenly gone. While gazing at the lighted curved road, my attention had turned to my ringing phone. My mom had called me for they had already the long hours of waiting for me.

This was my long planned travel. I was to conduct a family meeting regarding our ancestral lands and the concerns of our old parents. I felt this as my big responsibility. The uniting of my divided siblings and the assigning of rules and functions. Being the eldest, I understood the agony of my aging parents and my distance won’t allow me to address their needs immediately.Thanks to my brothers and sisters who lovingly prepared foods for our small gathering.

My one day travel going to Compostela Valley was so tiresome. Yet, I didn’t forget to pay homage for my hometown.At dawn, I woke up early to take a look at the valley’s horizon.

While taking a walk going to the Provincial Capitol, I met some health conscious people jogged. Their silhouette at the distance blended with the dark color of the trees. The coldness of the dawn refreshes the mind and feeling.

These are the beautiful landscapes of the Provincial Capitol.

What I did was taking the pictures of my long not seen hometown. The darkness of the dawn was not a hindrance to my desire. Yes, I successfully arranged my family concerns and untiringly payed homage to my dear Compostela Valley.